23. Who comes up with cheesy pick up lines?
Probably Gaara? But he doesn’t come up with them, Kankuro is trying to coach him on how to win his man and gives him a bunch of (borderline rauncy) pick up lines to try out. Gaara just blurts them out one right after the other, rapid-fire in his deadpan voice like :| *hands Lee a sugar packet* “I found your nametag, you must have dropped it”. Lee is incredibly confused initially because Gaara doesn’t really do innuendo or metaphor, so he’s trying to respond to all these weird questions in complete earnestness. By the time Lee figures out what he’s doing he’s been through, like, six or seven of them and is starting to run out and at that point Lee blushes profusely and slaps a hand over Gaara’s mouth halfway through the math pick-up line (you know the one, “Let’s add you and me, subtract our clothes...”). Once they in an established relationship though, Lee definitely has the corniest lines but he means them 100% wholeheartedly and thinks they’re romantic.
25. Who needs more assurance?
This one is hard, because I think they both need a lot of assurance ... just about different things. Lee really struggles with his self-worth, even as an adult, but I don’t really see Gaara as the type to, like, hold your face and tell you You’re Valid, so he probably gets his reassurance from the subtle ways that Gaara affirms he cares for him. Stuff like trusting Lee to back him up, or just the simple steadiness of him always being there. Lee puts a lot of stock in his worth as being connected to his ability to be a good shinobi, so any failing/injury etc. has the potential to send him into a tailspin, and, while I don’t think Gaara is exactly there to “pick up the pieces”, so to speak, his complete bewilderment that anyone would ever consider Lee as anything but highly competent and valuable definitely helps in its own way.
Gaara also needs reassurance, but it’s less about his personal failings and more about being reminded that the people he cares about also care about him. I think Gaara is very aware of how fragile all the good things in his life are (since all the good things in his life are human, and humans are fragile). While Lee’s an eternal optimist, Gaara is definitely more of a pessimist or at least a pragmatist ... while Lee’s looking at the glass as half-full, Gaara is wondering if it’s poisoned. I think in that sense he’s probably sensitive to small signs of rejection, like tone of voice or people not having time for him when he asks it. And while he tries to logic himself out of that emotion, it doesn’t always quite work. Lee is much more competent at reassurance with words and gestures than Gaara is, and he’s probably quite tuned-in to Gaara’s moods, so I think he’s quick to sweep in with a passionate speech about how much Gaara’s friends love him and a bear hug.
27. Who would sing to their child back to sleep?
Gaara, but he’s not very good at it. Lee’s more the type to see someone awake and think the cure for it is a vigorous set of push-ups to wear yourself back out. Not to mention Lee’s singing is probably closer to “bellowing”. And Gaara is probably familiar with roughly every insomnia cure there is, so lullabies are just another part of that repertoire. I think he probably only knows approximately one lullabye, though, and it’s either something that he barely remembers Yashamaru singing to him before things went south, or it’s something that Temari remembers from their mother and sings to him when he’s a teenager, post-extraction, and trying to sleep for the first time. He can’t carry a tune at all, so it’s more just, like, syllables and faint, tuneless humming. The kid gets used to that, though, and definitely finds it comforting.
